Is new book on making LEGO firearms harmless or scary?

This month a book with instructions on how to build four of the world’s most iconic firearms with LEGOs goes on sale. Should parents be concerned about “LEGO Heavy Weapons,” a book that was written by a 17-year-old yet intended for geeks who get off on gun porn?

Jack Streat is an accomplished LEGO weapons builder. The 17-year-old living in the U.K. can make an exact replica of an AKS-74U assault rifle with folding stock from tiny plastic blocks (No it doesn’t shoot real bullets! Think about it: The plastic would melt).

Streat shared his creations on YouTube and his dozens of videos have received over 16 million views. A video on building an AK-47 was viewed more than 3.3 million times and received nearly 6,000 comments. His fans cheer him on with colloquial zeal: “Like for awesome,” “OMG The greatest Lego gun ever!” and “You are good Dude!”

Yes, Streat has a huge following and his work is well-loved. That’s why No Starch Press, a small San Francisco-based publishing house, approached the teen about producing a book, and this month LEGO Heavy Weapons goes on sale for $24.95.

While Streat’s fan base is psyched some parents might be concerned because the book recommends using a well-loved children’s toy to build replicas of weapons designed to kill. When the same publisher released the book Forbidden LEGO: Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against in 2007, Britain’s Daily Telegraphed dubbed it the “the Anarchist Cookbook of the nursery,” according to Fox News.

LEGO Heavy Weapons features building instructions for replicas of the world’s most iconic firearms out of LEGO: a massive Desert Eagle handgun with working blow-back action, the compact but deadly AKS-74U assault rifle with folding stock, a bolt-action Lee Enfield sniper rifle (a.k.a. Jungle Carbine), and a pump action SPAS combat shotgun.

While the LEGO guns only shoot plastic bricks they are strikingly realistic to warfare weapons—and this makes Jon Trew, a father of two who lives in the UK, uncomfortable. “This is very sad!” he says. “I’m not a pacifist, or a utopian hippie but I’ve always loved the way that Lego bricks never made very convincing guns and just by it’s very form, channeled children into being constructive, imaginative and creative rather than aggressive and confrontational.

“If adults want to make models of automatic weapons and realistic guns, let them do it, but not using Lego. Using the bricks for this purpose really undermines and subverts a brilliant children’s toy. The pictures made me both sad and angry especially as the founders of Lego have consciously tried to avoid their products being used in this way. It made me feel a bit like when you see pictures of 13-year-old girls used as models in fashion magazines, it’s just wrong, wrong, wrong.”

LEGO’s kits include guns and weaponry. But the Denmark-based company has long had a policy “to avoid realistic weapons and military equipment that children may recognize” from war zones around the world. A statement in the 2011 Corporate Responsibility report reads: “We have strict rules for the use of weapons and violence in our products. The LEGO play experience must never be related to real world modern warfare, killing, torture or cruelty to animals.”

Trew of Cardiff was so disturbed by the book that he wrote LEGO letter. He quickly received a response and posted it on the site BoingBoing where there’s a discussion happening around the book. The email letter LEGO sent to Trew reenforces the company’s policy to steer clear of realistic military weapons:

We’re always disappointed to hear our LEGO® sets are being used in this way…It’s over 50 years since we decided not to make toys with a military theme, and we’re still sticking to that decision! So although we now make loads more toys, I hope you see it’s still really important to us that all the LEGO sets we invent are fun, imaginative and help fans, young or old, to learn.

Bill Pollock, founder and president of No Starch, thinks LEGO’s policy is hypocritical. “Have you seen their Bionicle line? They all carry guns.”

Pollock is right. The Bionicle robots come decked out in all sorts of blasters and launchers. In fact, these days many of LEGO’s sets sold in toy stores all over the world include gun-toting figurines. They might not be realistic but the weapons are still big and aggressive. In a Star Wars kit, Storm Troopers carry guns that are practically larger than the figurines themselves.

No matter, Pollock doesn’t think kids will be the ones buying LEGO Heavy Weapons. “This is a book for geeks,” he says. No Starch is known for publishing the “finest in geek entertainment” and its bestsellers include Hacking: The Art of Exploitation and The Manga Guides. These books attracted a computer programming crowd and Pollock expects that the LEGO book will be popular with the same people. “These are geeks who are fascinated by military weaponry not gun-carrying members of the NRA,” Pollock says.

Dr. Michael Thompson, author of It’s a Boy! Understanding Your Son’s Development from Birth to Age 18, understands this geeky male attraction to guns. “I get it. They are geeky LEGO guys,” Dr. Thompson says. “I have one. He’s [my son and] he’s in art school. There’s nothing he’d like more than building something from this book. He’d have a blast with it. My son is fascinated by the idea of guns. But my son would never hurt anyone. He’s never even punched someone.”

Dr. Thompson says that many parents just don’t get boys’ fascination with guns. “Moms are always asking me what they should do about their sons’ violent play,” he says. “I tell them, ‘Violence and aggression are intended to hurt. but play isn’t intended to hurt. Play is play.’”

Dr. Thompson adds that there’s no research showing that playing with toy guns can lead to aggression.

But playing with toy Nerf guns and Star Wars LEGO figurines holding lightsabers is one thing. The guns in this book are incredibly realistic. Shouldn’t parents be concerned? “They’re not realistic,” Dr. Thompson says. “They don’t shoot. These guns are related to the impulse to create, not the impulse to kill.”

This is all true, but U.K. father Jon Trew brings up another important point: Could these toy guns confuse children into thinking it’s OK to play with real guns? “Whatever side of the argument you are on, no one in their right mind would want encourage children to play with realistic models just in case they came across a real one and thought they could play with it in the same way,” Trew says.

Dr. Thompson has a solution for Trew’s concern. “Talk to your kids about guns,” he advises. “Toy guns provide a teaching opportunity to talk about why real guns aren’t toys and aren’t safe.”